Cars, Law and Politics from Boston.

This blog will be silent for a while for a Carpundit sabbatical. I'll drop the occasional post, but not daily. Check back every now and then, or add me to your aggregator. Thanks for reading, and happy motoring.

A police officer was shot last night in Boston; he is expected to make a full recovery, but that's pure good luck. If the Herald's account is accurate, the suspect was then shot twice by a trooper, but got right up and laughed about what he had done.

While we're talking about BMW 2002's, I should perhaps mention that mine just sold for about $2500. That's roughly one third of the total amount I put into it in the past two years. I drove it about seven times, for less than 1000 miles. I don't want to work out the exact per mileage cost of that particular learning experience. Lesson learned? I like to look at BMW 2002's, but not own them. Did I just answer yesterday's question?

Recently, a correspondent asked if I had any resources to help him price a BMW 1600 he was selling. I didn't have much, but I sent a few links and included my opinion at no extra charge. It got me wondering. Why are the early sport-sedan BMW's so undervalued? I mean, of course, the 1600, but also the 2002. They can be had for a song in decent shape. Excellent ones are well under $10,000, and if you want a sporty, tinker-with-it-yourself weekend car, you'd be hard-pressed to do better.

By comparison, the Alfas of the era are much more expensive, with really good ones getting into the 20's, retail at least. Why?

The Boston Globe today carries a story about two homes for sale in the heart of Boston's Back Bay, at 128 and 130 Commonwealth Avenue. Vaguely interesting, I guess, but it jumped out at me for one reason:

I don't really care about WRKO's decision not to employ Bernard McGuirk as a fill-in or co-host for Tom Finneran. McGuirk is lousy as a host, I don't listen to WRKO, and we've already seen that Al Sharpton can control the airwaves when he wants. So there's no there in that story. But I laughed at something ancillary in the Boston Globereport of the decision:

Dan Kennedy, who teaches journalism at Northeastern University and
blogs on the local media scene, applauded the station for reversing
course.

"To actually bring McGuirk into Boston, and to pair him
with a guy who -- although he's not doing that well on the ratings
certainly, has some class and some dignity -- was an awful decision,
and I'm glad they're not going to do it," he said.

Here's the rear end of a Porsche Carrera (996) that's seen some better days, cosmetically. Those protuberances on either side of the license plate may have been black originally, as on my car. The painted versions are available aftermarket (bumperplugs.com, e.g.) and look a lot better, I think. That is, they look a lot better until they get scratched and dinged from parking in Boston. Click for larger and see the damage. Yikes.

We took in Shrek the Third over the weekend, along with everyone else in rainy New England. We went early, for the morning matinee. It was expensive anyway. Then we got to sit through advertising for junk no one should feed their kids. After that, we got to sit through previews for other films they want us to pay too much to see, most of which appear not to be worth even a reasonable admission price. [Prediction: Seinfeld's bee movie will turn out to be a C movie.]

And what's with showing a preview for a movie with machine guns, missiles, and invading robots before a kids' film? And who thinks it's a good idea to show a preview with Queen Latifah making racial jokes to an audience of five-year-olds?

And why to do media outlets lead with the weekend take as if it were a sporting contest? When did the box office take become of concern to anyone outside the industry? Oh, and could we stop the stupid headlines on that topic ("Big Green Ogre Stomps Spidey")?

There's a nice article about a Boston Police dispatcher by Suzanne Smalley in the Boston Globe. A good dispatcher makes all the difference in policing -ask any cop anywhere- and it sounds like Brenda Ortiz is one.